How to Outflank a Firing: Tips for Preventing Your Impending Dismissal

You always assumed you were invisible, but somehow your shoddy work, three hour lunches, and questionable Internet surfing have been noticed.

Or maybe the company has been laying people off, and you’ll have a hard time defending the necessity of your job because you yourself are unsure what you’re supposed to be doing. You sit at a desk, drink coffee, turn your computer on and off once each day, and twice an hour force a chuckle when the boss passes and asks, “Working hard or hardly working?” and that’s about it.

Nobody has said anything directly, but your boss is avoiding eye contact, you’ve been moved off long-term projects, and a secretary escorted a new guy through the office and when she paused at your desk you heard her whisper to him, “This is where you’ll be sitting. It won’t always smell like this.” Your HR director asks if you’ll be in the office on Friday, although he knows you’re always in the office on Friday. Except of course during your three hour lunch. Also on Fridays you get in an hour late because Thursday is trivia night at the pub. Also on Fridays you leave early for Tequila Fridays at Malone’s.

The clock is ticking until Friday when the HR director will call you into his office at the end of the day. Do you sit and wait for others to decide your fate, or do you take action and strategize a way to save your job?

Don’t beg. Don’t show weakness. The best thing you can do is march into your boss’ office, leave the door open so his secretary can hear you, and announce:

1. I’m a gay, pregnant, Scientologist!

Check mate, HR! You can’t fire someone the day after he reveals he’s a gay, pregnant, Scientologist unless HR feels like losing an open-and-shut discrimination case and writing a big fat check.

You’ve bought yourself two to three months, and during this time you can either try doing your job better, or if hard work isn’t your style, you can try one of these techniques for lingering as long as possible.

2. Show your boss a picture of your hot sister-in-law who would be perfect for him because she’s attracted to Steve Buscemi lookalikes who wear hiking boots with dress pants and interrupt all the time. She’s coming to town next week, and you suggest setting them up. But next week she has a change of plans when she has to fly to Europe for a modeling job, maybe something to do with hiking boots and dress pants for women. She keeps getting delayed, and you may be able to keep him interested for another two to three months.

3. Borrow something valuable, and he won’t fire you until he gets it back, like his car or his dog or his wife. How are you going to get his keys? Offer to wash his car. How are you going to get Fido? Offer to wash his dog. How are you going to get his wife?

4. Wait for your boss at the water cooler and open up to him about how your marriage is on the rocks, and the only strong relationships you have are at work, and you just don’t know what you’d do without your work family. You just don’t know what you’d do…

5. When all else fails, accuse yourself of sexually harassing yourself. I admit it’s a Hail Mary, but the he said/she said or in this case I said/I said might take some time to straighten out.

My strategy for not getting fired was always to have at least one weirder person than I employed at the organization. Unfortunately, at most of the places where I worked, often everybody was weirder than I, so they got together and said, “Let the normal person go.”

So here I am, retired, and the most normal person in a cult.

Also, I have been married for 45 years to a person with whom I am 80% incompatible. Why she hasn’t fired me? I tell her: “We might as well stay married. We are both too weird for anyone else to put up with…”

I luv luv luv nr 5! “I admit it’s a Hail Mary, but the he said/she said or in this case I said/I said might take some time to straighten out”. As a lawyer I’m sure I can defend this case- either side hahahha

Show the boss the essay allegedly written by your child for Role Model Day at school, wherein he is described as the beacon of the hill for you and your family. Relate how the boss has soothed your family in hard times and have the child draw a picture of the boss with a halo. Have the child send him a teddy bear and a lock of the child’s hair. Gotta buy at least 4 more months. Esp with weekly follow up from the child and the invitation to speak to the class on Career Day. .

I love how your mind works! I happened to get pregnant w/2nd child and I think my work was considering a new person and when I announced I was preggers the HR Director laughed. And I overheard her telling ceo. I’m not certain if they really were considering another and decided to keep me, but I quit when Sam was 6 months old.
Sandihttp://www.ahhsome.wordpress.com

There is also the popular technique of information hoarding, whereby you become indispensible because no one else has the relevant files/access/meeting invitations needed to get the job done. Bonus: This will alienate you from your co-workers and get you out of having to buy Girl Scout cookies and participate in charity walks of unclear origin.

This is genuinely good advice. I always tell friends that if you want to ensure you’ll always have a job, make sure you can do something nobody else can do. If you can take a two week vacation with minimal disruption to the company, at some point someone will realize you’re dispensable.

Ahahahahahahahah I’m really glad I subscribed to your blog… Now I’m sure I can find my daily dose of laughter.
(by the way, it’s a pity that n°1 can’t be applied, here in Italy. Usually they fire you BECAUSE you’re gay or pregnant. And if only they knew what Scientology is, probably they would do the same…)

Something like “Have I ever told you about my boyfriend? He’s an irritable butcher whose hobbies are playing rugby and collecting shotguns” or “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse”? A bit hackneyed, though

Whether that will save your job in Italy or not I can’t be sure. But I do know saying your boyfriend was an irritable butcher who played rugby and collected shotguns would make you the most interesting person at the office and might save your job just so we could hear more details about your boyfriend.

The gay, Pregnant Scientologist is good – but don’t forget hidden disabilities. Start making medical appointments, especially with mental health workers- they can’t fire you while treating for a disability, and tourettes syndrome is especially fun! You can curse out your management all day long, and nOT A THING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT! Pick a few key phrases, and REPEAT OFTEN.

This should not only secure your job indefinately, is a hard condition to disprove (clearly brought on by sudden stress caused by (his/her name here), and promises hours of joyful, retaliation-free libel.

All good advice – except maybe point 4 – think you’d have to be more explicit about your recent sessions at the shooting range and gun purchases.
You could always try the – “Wouldn’t it be a shame if those compromising photographs from that work weekend came out” gambit. You don’t need to have any – his guilt and fear may be enough.
(BTW – came here via carldagostino)

We are so Politically Correct (aka PC) here in New Zealand. One can’t be fired because of a disability, creed, race, color, sexual proclivity in fact, it’s really hard to find a reason to fire somebody, And you also have to give two written warnings. So washing the dog with the wrong shampoo twice could be a reason to be fired. Do be sure to check the brand of shampoo first.

Hilarious. But, sadly, none of these would have helped me when, at age 15, I was fired as an asst camp counselor because another girl and I wrote obscenties on the bunkhouse walls. We planned to sneak in early the next morning and erase them. We forgot that that evening was parents’ visitation night.

The “I’m pregnant” gambit is especially useful for men, because it sets all kinds of traps for the HR department. If they require more documentation of your pregnancy than of a female colleague’s, that’s sex discrimination. If the company policy provides less paternity leave than maternity leave, how much leave do you get? If they give you the longer amount, all the other new fathers can complain you’re getting preferential treatment; if they give you the shorter amount, you can complain than you’re getting less leave than the other employees who’ve given birth.

As stated above, the “gay, pregnant Scientologist” thing might work, but just coming out with it might look suspicious. For it to work, I suggest subtly laying the groundwork early on, say by expressing a liking for [well known Scientologist whose name I’ve omitted since we all know what humourless ****holes he and his fellow nutjobs tend to be]’s movies, which would handily tick two of the criteria specified. The pregnancy thing might be a little harder to accomplish, depending on your sex.

You might have to grope yourself to really sell it in front of HR. “Did you just see me grope me? That’s unacceptable behavior! I can’t work in an environment where I’m constantly making myself uncomfortable.”

I was smiling the whole way but #5, your final point, got me laughing hard. I may also have snorted. I’ve been told by elder statesmen at the college to go for the HR nightmare by lying about my ethnicity and sexual orientation. Now borrowing bosses wife? That only works in January.

These are all great ideas, just be sure you are actually on the verge of being fired. I speak from experience when I say don’t assume and then decide this is your last chance to tell your boss that the Shemp hair cut was never really in style and that he smells like spoiled pork.

Nice suggestions. Just a slight problem with borrowing the wife of the boss. We’d have to make sure that the wife is worth borrowing. He might just fire us instantly if it meant he could get rid of his wife!! hehe!